


Good Company

by friendlyneighborhoodsecretary



Series: I'm Never Prompt with Prompts [7]
Category: Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies)
Genre: Found Family, Gen, Happy Hogan is a Good Bro, Not Quite Uncle Happy Yet, Post-Spider-Man: Homecoming, slight angst, tumblr prompt fill
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-15
Updated: 2019-12-15
Packaged: 2021-02-26 05:20:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,556
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21798244
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/friendlyneighborhoodsecretary/pseuds/friendlyneighborhoodsecretary
Summary: There are certain things even Peter Parker doesn't talk about on those endless commutes upstate; Ben Parker is one of them.
Relationships: Happy Hogan & Peter Parker
Series: I'm Never Prompt with Prompts [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1558726
Comments: 11
Kudos: 142





	Good Company

**Author's Note:**

> Based on the prompt: "First Moment of Vulnerability"

If Peter didn’t say something soon, Happy might just have to panic.

Any other time, he would’ve savored the quiet. Relished it even, since the ride between Midtown S&T and the compound was almost never a quiet affair. Peter always found _something_ he just had to chatter about, whether it was the latest teenybopper gossip about who had pulled what prank and which chemistry classes had gone up in smoke (“—not that that one was _my_ fault, though—promise!”) or what kind of weirdness he’d encountered in his last patrol. Once upon a time, it drove Happy up the wall—usually drove him to raise the _literal_ wall between him and the backseat within five minutes flat—but he’d grown accustomed to it over the past few months.

But today, Peter had said nothing.

There had been a terse “Hey, Happy,” when he slid into the backseat and a muffled “m’good” when asked if he wanted to stop for drive-through on the way, but no real conversation. Not even the vaguely nosy little questions about Happy’s day that he…didn’t _miss_ , per se…but which had always seemed like a nice gesture in comparison to the way in which most passengers who weren’t Tony, Pepper, or Rhodey ignored him completely. It was odd. And Happy didn’t like odd.

A furtive glance into the backseat revealed Peter pressed into one corner, leaning his head against the window with his eyes closed as if to block out the world. If Happy had to take a guess, he’d go with a sensory episode, but…that exactly didn’t fit. He’d seen those before. Memorized the pained little clues, the tense, coiled body language, and the rest of the tells that let him get the kid help as soon as he needed it. None of them were present today, nor were there signs for any of the other little woes that Happy had heard Peter mention in passing, all of which added up to leave Happy at a loss. He sighed. There was nothing for it except the direct approach.

“What’s amatter with you?”

“Hmm?” Peter started at the abrupt demand, frowning as he blinked back into awareness.

“You’re being weird. Is it a sensory thing? Or are you sick—tell me you’re not sick because we’re not dealing with any upchucking in this car, I just vacuumed it yester—"

“I’m not sick,” Peter said dutifully, albeit with a faint thread of annoyance running behind it. He shifted in his seat in an attempt to angle away from the rearview’s field of vision and pulled his backpack up to rummage for a textbook. For an out from the scrutiny, if Happy wasn’t mistaken. Happy’s eyes narrowed.

“Well, what is it, then?”

“It’s not your probl—It doesn’t matter, Happy, just…let it go.”

“Hey, you’re the asset, I’m the asset manager—” Happy wagged a finger in the mirror for emphasis. A hint of foreboding welled up in his chest at the direction the conversation was leaning. The last time the kid had taken it upon himself to decide what was and wasn’t Happy’s problem, they’d _all_ ended up in trouble. And Peter had ended up falling out of the sky on a burning jet. “—and _I_ get to decide if it’s my problem or not, understand? Start talking, kid.”

“You wanna borrow my suit? It’s got a great interrogation mode, and since that’s the vibe you’re going for—” Peter’s voice rose in tone to match Happy’s, then clammed up abruptly, as if Peter had surprised himself almost as much as he’d surprised Happy.

For all the snapping Happy did on a regular basis, Peter never snapped back. There was teenage sass and eyerolls for days, but never anything with any real bite behind it. Not until today, anyway. A heavy silence reigned until Peter cleared his throat and murmured a stiff, almost inaudible apology that did nothing to quell Happy’s growing concern. He didn’t reply until he found a big enough gap in traffic to pull off and park.

“Front seat,” he said, turning in his seat to fix Peter with a look that brooked no argument. The kid pursed his lips and, for a split-second, Happy caught a glimpse of something behind his eyes. A ragged, worn sort of exhaustion, paired with a sadness that felt utterly jarring looking out of such a young face. It vanished as quickly as it had come, blinked away behind a wall that Happy hadn’t realized was there as Peter clambered out to slouch into the front passenger’s seat. It threw him so thoroughly off-balance that he wasn’t sure where to begin.

“Peter—you gotta tell me what’s—”

“I’m sorry, I know I shouldn’t have snapped.” His voice was a little louder now, but still brittle in a way that Happy hadn’t heard from him before. It didn’t seem to fit. Like new audio recorded over a different video, that sort of anger and sorrow and…and _grief_ didn’t mesh with the bright optimism Happy knew. “It’s just…it’s been two years today. Since my uncle…uh…passed.”

“Oh.” Happy was an idiot. Intellectually, he’d known there was a dead uncle, but had never really considered what that might mean to Peter. He’d never needed to when Peter was a peripheral part of his life rather than a twice-weekly constant. He gives his condolences quickly, the words automatic and hollow in a way that feels awkward even as he says them. But what else was there to say to something like that? “I’m sorry.”

“Wasn’t your fault.” Peter’s voice is flat. Tired in the way of someone who’s heard the same words too many times over because he probably had. Happy tapped an uneasy finger on the steering wheel he still held. There was a dossier somewhere with all of Peter’s background info. He hadn’t bothered reading past the first page back when he was only supposed to chauffeur the kid back and forth to Germany. Whatever the story was with the unnamed Parker uncle who must’ve died _strikingly_ young to leave a nephew this age behind, he didn’t know it. But, if this reaction was any indication, he probably should.

“How did he—I mean, what…” Happy floundered. As much as he wanted to know, it felt like an overstep to ask. A breach in the companionable tolerance they’d settled into since Peter’s disastrous Homecoming. There was a difference between rambling about his day-to-day and opening up about something so private, and the longer Peter stayed quiet, the less sure Happy was that he’d earned the right to snoop that far.

The silence held for an uneasy moment, long enough for Happy to open his mouth to retract the question before Peter finally spoke.

“Bodega robbery. Wrong place, wrong time…” The backpack zipper that Peter had been fiddling with snaps off in his fingers, a dull crack to match the dull anger simmering under the surface. “We shouldn’t have been there.”

“Oh.” Happy’s focus hitched on the ‘we’ part of the sentence, and his stomach turned with the realization of what that meant. Of what Peter must’ve seen and felt and suffered. Suddenly, a great deal of what Peter did with his nights made a lot more sense. “That’s…ah…that has to be a lot. For you.”

“Yeah,” Peter whispered, a thousand-yard stare falling out the window from where he sits. Seconds stretch into a minute, then two, before Peter finally gathered himself. He curled his arms around his middle in an almost-defensive huddle as he turned back to Happy. “Still shouldn’t have snapped. I almost didn’t come today…Knew I wouldn’t be very good company.”

“Well,” Happy said, quiet and steady to make up for the explosion he’d accidentally sparked. “I’m never very good company, but you still ride with me.”

Peter snorted, but without any malice. “Not like I’ve got much choice there.”

“And we both know Tony isn’t easy company,” Happy added with enough exasperation to get Peter’s lips to twitch in the faintest hint of a smile. “But we all put up with him.”

Not that Tony was _bad_ company—Happy’d been in fistfights over less slanderous things than that insinuation—he could just be…unpredictable. Bright as a summer day one moment and fierce as a winter gale the next. It took getting used to, just as Happy knew his own grousing and glowering was an acquired taste. As was Pepper’s bossiness or Rhodey’s big-brother belief that he always knew best. That was just the way of it with family. No one was good company every moment of every day. Not even Peter, no matter how much of an effort he seemed to put into keeping the things that truly bothered him under wraps.

That effort was news to Happy, a surprise he wouldn’t have expected from a kid who didn’t seem to have a deceptive bone in his body, but now that he knew…he was glad to have been trusted. There was more to the story—all of his investigative instincts said so—but that could wait, now that Happy knew the root of his upset lay in the past rather than in some present disaster. The kid would spill the rest when he was ready. And Happy would be there when he was.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading! Feel free to drop a comment with any thoughts you have or stop by and say hello on [Tumblr](https://friendlyneighborhoodsecretary.tumblr.com/)!


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